


The Shrike

by awritingrose



Series: I Wish I Was The Moon-verse [3]
Category: Video Blogging RPF, Who Killed Markiplier? (Web Series)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Light Angst, Mutual Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-12
Updated: 2019-03-12
Packaged: 2019-11-16 06:32:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18089240
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/awritingrose/pseuds/awritingrose
Summary: "I couldn't utter my love when it counted/ah, but I'm singing like a bird about it now"A tale of two idiots who can never seem to just spit it out.





	The Shrike

**Author's Note:**

> I still don't show up in the tags on tumblr (I think), so here we go again! 4k words of fluffy-ish Mayor Attorney! This is semi-canon to, and contains references to events in, "I Wish I Was the Moon" proper, but can be read and understood as a standalone.

Damien is sixteen when Tess's smile raises heat in his cheeks for the first time. Mark and Celine are turning heads on the dance floor of the Debutante’s Ball, their bodies too close together and his hands too low on her spine. Celine has already angered their parents for the night, arriving with Tess and wearing not the white silk gown they’d purchased for her, but a close-fitted black dress with silver beading.

(Tess, helped out of the carriage by Mr. Barnum, had looked so radiant it had made Damien’s mouth run dry. She was still a month and a half out from sixteen, and not a part of “high society”, but Mrs. Barnum had threatened to withdraw her funding from the Ball if they did not allow Tess to debut with the others. It seemed she’d also had a gown tailored for Tess, creamy silk with a high empire waist beneath layers of white lace and a gold satin sash.)

They are each entertaining their prospective suitors, Tess with a man old enough to be her father (one mention that she is a laundress’s daughter is enough to send him away), Damien with a girl whose name he cannot recall, mostly because he hasn’t listened to a word she’s said in favor of looking at the way the light catches on the crystal net in Tess’s dark hair.

Tess meets his eyes from halfway across the room and smiles, reassuring. He can almost hear her voice. _“We’ll get through this together.”_

It’s what she always says at these sorts of events, what with them both being happier sitting in a library reading than rubbing noses like this. Still, Damien has learned to do it out of necessity--with Celine showing no sign of slowing down, someone has to be the good child. Someone has to keep her safe from herself, from their father’s wrath.

Tess’s eyes flicker to where Mark guides Celine through a turn with entirely too many touches, directing Damien to see it as well. When he looks back to Tess, she sticks her tongue out as if she were gagging, an expression wholly inappropriate to make at her own debut.

Still, it makes him laugh, and that in turn makes him realize that the girl talking to him had not said anything funny at all, from the way she falls silent and purses her lips.

“Excuse me for a moment,” He says, with no intention of coming back to finish their conversation.

Tess grins up at him as he makes his way through the crowd to stand beside of her. He forgets, sometimes, how short she is--and how much smaller she can make herself seem, if the need arises. But tonight...tonight she is shining, _glowing_ , letting herself take up space and be seen. 

“They’re disgusting,” She notes, looking back out at Celine and Mark. There’s no disgust in her voice, though, only warm affection, and a smile playing at the corners of her mouth.

Damien nods in agreement. “I can already hear my father yelling.”

Tess looks up at him then, her brows pulled together as she tries to read his face. Mr. Barnum is the closest thing she’s ever had to a father, and he’s never once raised his voice to Tess or either of his sons. Damien forgets sometimes that she is perceptive enough to see that the flippancy he refers to his own father’s outbursts with is an act. Yet he smiles down at her and dares to squeeze her hand ( _only once before he lets go, can’t let anyone see, he’d hold her hand all night but he knows she fears the prying eyes around them_ ). A wordless reassurance, a silent “I’m fine”.

It takes a moment before she twists her mouth to one side (“don’t lie to me,” her expression says) and drops the subject.

“Should we save them from themselves?” She asks instead.

Something rebellious and selfish rises in his chest. He almost says no, let them face the consequences of their own actions, they’ve done this to themselves, they have to learn, they made a _choice_. He wants to stand there in companionable silence with Tess, or talking about the world with her; he wants to find a way beneath her shell and see the real Tess she keeps hidden.

( _He sees it sometimes, when she is over to spend a girls’ night in with Celine._

_“Why do you put on an act like that for the boys?” Celine had asked, as he happened to be passing by her cracked bedroom door on his way to his room. “Oh, you know, all too-good-for-this-world-blushing-virgin.”_

_“It’s not…completely an act,” Tess had replied after what felt like an age. “That’s just...that’s who they want me to be, so that’s who I have to be.”_ )

But he knows Tess will never agree to that. She’ll always stick her neck out to save the rest of them, even when they’ve made their own beds. It’s some combination of love and loyalty that, he thinks, will be her death one day if she keeps sacrificing herself for everyone around her. He still remembers those six months she spent staying at his house instead of the manor, after she’d taken the blame for Celine’s foolishness with the spirit board.

So he sweeps a bow and offers her his hand, and she takes it with a small curtsy. The smile she gives him is so genuine that for a moment his heart hurts and he almost says all the words that take up too much space in his head.

He doesn’t. He never does, because he knows she’d never feel the same way. Even if she did, they are both the prized children, they both have roles to play, and there is no room for each other in those roles.

If he commits the feeling of her dress beneath his hand to memory, it is because he’s sentimental. If he notes how they flow together like water, how easy she is to guide and how much she trusts him to be there, it is because he’s never been that good at leading and this is a learning experience. If the way she uses him as a spot when she spins, never taking her eyes (and the intensity in them) away from his, fills his face with warmth, it is because it’s a Californian summer and all the windows are closed. If he takes his time leading them across the floor until they are next to his sister and Mark, well.

He has no excuse for that.

When they are close enough, Damien releases Tess and pulls Celine over, while Tess grabs Mark’s hands. Both members of the couple protest the sudden swap but Damien sweeps Celine away, back across the floor, before either of them can regroup. He and Tess have practiced the quick-swap a few more times than might have been necessary.

Celine steps on his feet, absolutely on purpose, but for once in her life she actually seems aware of all the eyes on them. _The judge’s children, dancing together, aren’t they just the sweetest twins?_

“What do you think you’re doing?” She snarls.

He holds her hand too tightly to let her stomp off and cause a scene. “Saving you two from yourselves.”

Tess, across the room, pokes Mark’s nose. He rolls his eyes, but smiles all the same, and goes to ruffle her hair--sparking false outrage as she tries to defend his aunt’s styling. Damien knows just how hard it is to be angry with Tess. He only wishes his sister were a little more forgiving.

“I don’t _need_ you to make decisions for me. I can think for myself.” This time, it’s the point of Celine’s heel that comes down on his foot, and Damien winces. “I know what I’m doing.”

“You’ve done _enough_ ,” He hisses back. He turns her just slightly, just enough so she can see their mother trying to diffuse their father’s anger like it’s a bomb.

He doesn’t expect her to back down. He really doesn’t. Celine has never once _stopped_ in their whole lives. She’s always found the line and then gleefully jumped across it. Or, as he’s always thought, she simply can’t tell when enough is enough, when she’s truly gone too far.

But she doesn’t break out of his grip. She stays, and lets him lead her, though there is no grace in her movements and he feels as if he’s having to drag her dead weight across the floor.

“I’m surprised you gave up dancing with Tess for this.” Celine grins, devolving into full out laughter when she sees him blush.

He doesn’t try to hide it; she’s his sister, his twin. She knows everything. There’s no real fire in his voice. “Shut up.”

She at least isn’t trying to claw his eyes out, so he’ll take a little bit of teasing about a crush that will never be.

Or he’s willing to, anyway, until he catches sight of Tess and Mark again--only they aren’t alone. William has finally made it onto the dance floor, and Tess slides easily out of Mark’s arms and into his. They grew up learning to dance together, after all, of course they look as if they were made for one another. Tess throws her head back and laughs with pure, unadulterated joy. William leads her around the floor at a pace far too fast for the music, in a style far too “low-brow” for the setting, and for once she seems free of her fear of judgement.

And Damien remembers, as she and William brush past he and Celine, that he will never be the one she loves.

***

He does not know fear until her scream echoes through the manor. They’re twenty, now, and William has seen war, and Mark and Celine are married, and Damien always feels as if he’s drowning. He’s spending the night in the manor after staying too late to help Tess study for her law school entrance exam. She lives there, with Mark and Celine, after her break-up left her homeless and traumatized. William’s only home for the night, ready to leave in the morning on his next fantastic adventure.

They all meet in the hallway, all of them sprinting to Tess’s room, all of them fearing the worst. Had Julian broken in? Did he mean to kill her for not marrying him, as he’d always threatened? William surely seems prepared for it, with his service pistol in hand. Damien, for a moment, regrets not grabbing some sort of weapon, because he wants to be her hero for once, but that’s a stupid thought and he squashes it.

William bursts into the room first by silent consensus, as he is the only one armed. Celine and Mark are next, crowded into the doorframe, and Damien finds himself trapped by their bodies in the hall.

He watches Celine nearly crumple in front of him as she grabs Tess and half-restrains her; only belatedly does Damien realize that Tess had been trying to flee the room, though he can't tell why. There were no gunshots, no open windows, no signs of an intruder.

“It was a nightmare,” Celine whispers, pressing her lips to Tess’s temple. “Just a nightmare. You’re safe.”

Tess pulls in a hiccuping sob and pushes Celine away. There are tears streaking across her face and no one really seems to know what to do with that. Tess doesn’t cry. She doesn’t sob so openly, doesn’t look between her friends’ (her family’s!) faces with suspicion and fear, doesn’t look around wildly searching for an escape.

“No. Damien, take me-take me home. I’m not staying here. I’m sorry, I’m not--I can’t. I need to leave,” she finally says, already going to grab her coat from where it’s piled on the floor.

She fell asleep in her clothes, Damien realizes, and he’s thankful for it. He doesn’t want to be seen driving around with a half-dressed woman at this hour of night.

He tucks her in on the couch when they get to his house (later, he’ll think about what it means that she called his house “home”). She adamantly refuses Celine’s old room any time he offers. She refuses most of the comfort he offers, really, from tea to his saying he’d stay awake while she sleeps and keep a vigil.

He considers, briefly, not giving her a choice. Just making the tea and pushing it into her hands, or sitting in the armchair until she falls asleep, or reading one of her textbooks to her. But she’s _decided_. So he goes to sleep in his bedroom.

And when he wakes, Tess is gone. Not just gone from his home, but gone from the city, gone from his life. She leaves a note in her place on the couch. Says she’ll write him when she gets to wherever she’s going. Asks him to tell the others she’s okay. Says there’s nothing left for her there but ghosts.

Is that all he’s ever been to her?

***

He summons her back to the city four years later, just as she passes the bar, as she eventually tells him. So much has changed while she’s been away, and Damien hates to be the one to have to tell her everything. William is gone more often than not, and when he’s been home, he’s been sleeping with Celine. Mark threw her out onto her ear, she took her money, and no one’s seen her in weeks. Mark won’t leave the manor.

But Tess? Tess is beautiful, as always, from the moment he picks her up at the train station. She’s paler than she used to be, but she’s written him often of the horrid winters where she felt she only saw the sun one day of the week. She’s written him often about everything, actually, all of her escapades on the other side of the country, and he’s watched her bloom into the person she was always meant to be with only a little bit of resentment that she found it so easy to start over.

On the other hand, he only tells her about the good in his letters. He can’t help but still see her as delicate, as fragile, as the wallflower teen who did everything she could to make everyone happy. He tells her when his campaign for mayor goes well, not about the way his father’s spirit weighs him down like concrete blocks in the ocean. He tells her that William is well, not that the soldier grows more manic and detached each time Damien sees him. He tells her that Mark’s career is really taking off, not that her best friend ( _her brother, she always called Mark_ ) is prone to fits of rage that seem to happen more and more often.

Not even Tess can bring Mark out of his manor, though. Damien pretends not to see the tears in her eyes as he drives her back to the house she’s renting. She’s still Tess, still his friend, but they’re both such different people now that Damien isn’t wholly sure how to act.

She’d understood when he’d said she couldn’t stay with him anymore, of course. He’d known she would. He’d told her it would cause a scandal, that his campaign couldn’t afford it, and he didn’t want to risk her reputation, either. She was a brilliant lawyer. He wouldn’t see her smeared across the tabloids.

Of course, he hadn’t told her the real reason.

When Damien wrote his letters, he didn’t tell her (deliberately) that cards were the only thing to make him feel like he could breathe. Gambling is stupid, he knows that, but the wins are amazing and the losses are--well, they feel like a well-earned punishment. Like righteous justice. He doesn’t want her in his house so she won’t see him going out to play in speakeasies with money he really doesn’t have anymore. He doesn’t want her in his house so she won’t see him going to the manor in the middle of the night for clandestine meetings with Mark, to beg for loans from the bottomless Barnum fortune.

He doesn’t want her to be seen coming and going from his house, true, but he’s not afraid of tabloid rags. He’s afraid of the men he owes money to, afraid that they might spot Tess and know she’s his weakness, afraid they might realize he’d do anything to keep her safe, afraid of what he knows he’d do to keep her safe.

They celebrate together when he wins the election two years later, the district attorney and the new mayor. They part ways at the restaurant. She hails a taxi; Damien plans to walk. He’s not so far from his home. Maybe now that he’s _done something with his life_ , he can escape his father’s ghost.

They find him on the steps of his home, which is an awful bold move for a pair of thugs with a baseball bat. It goes the way these things usually do: he hasn’t paid his debts. He promises he will, just give him time, he’s the mayor now, they don’t want to do anything rash. They do, indeed, want to do something rash.

He lies there on the sidewalk with a broken knee and a few cracked ribs until someone finally sees him and calls an ambulance.

It is nearly seven in the morning when he wakes up from surgery, groggy from the anaesthetic. He thinks he’s still dreaming when he looks to his side and sees Tess’s face next to his; her body is draped between where she sits in the chair by his bed and where she’s cushioned her head on her arms and fallen asleep on his pillow.

“Tess?” Damien whispers. The motion of his breath across her face is enough to wake her.

Her nose crinkles, and she sits up bleary-eyed, and for a moment, in the haze of the drugs and the shock, Damien thinks that it might have been worth it to finally have one day where he wakes up beside her.

She recovers herself quick enough, looking him up and down, combing her hair out with her fingers. “Damien! They called me as soon as it happened, I came in right away, but you were still in surgery, they said they weren’t sure they could fix it, are you--what happened?!”

“I fell,” He slurs.

He thinks she’s seen through him. She’s always seen through him. She blinks several times at him, wordless, her mouth hanging open. Then she starts to laugh. “Oh, Damien, I’ve been telling you for _years_ to fix that top step! And now here you are!”

Here he is indeed, Damien thinks. His stomach turns at yet another lie. But she is safer not knowing. He remembers how quick she’s always been to put herself between her friends and danger, and he will not see her throw her life away (literally or figuratively) to save him.

The world quiets when she reaches out to brush his hair out of his eyes and lets her hand rest on his cheek. She smiles at him, the same reassuring smile she’s always had. It’s selfish, but like this, Damien can pretend that the concern in her eyes is because she loves him the way he loves her. The way he’s always loved her.

***

He and Celine are still arguing when Tess and that detective (Abraham, Damien remembers) break the door open. Tess looks wide-eyed between the siblings, then pulls them each into a quick hug, while Abraham stands guard in the doorway behind her.

“It’s William,” she says, her mouth set in a grim line. “He’s gone mad. He killed Mark, and he’s--I don’t know. He won’t listen to me anymore, I don’t know what he's going to do. Abe and I are going to get the police. Please, _please_ , come with us. We’ll all fit in my car.”

She doesn’t let go of Damien’s hand until she has to, until he has to squeeze into the backseat with Celine while Tess starts the car.

In the police station, Tess sits on a bench by herself while the officers take statements from Celine and the staff. She and Damien have already given theirs, and Abraham will give his much later, when things are settled down.

Damien watches from across the lobby as Abraham hands her a cup of coffee and rests his hand on her shoulder. He can see the detective’s mouth move, but he can’t tell what’s being said.

Still, he remembers how the detective had called her gorgeous, how quickly Tess had bonded with the stranger--and something odd and possessive rises in Damien. He crosses the room in a few broad strides and wraps his coat around her shoulders. Abraham seems to take the hint (he almost looks relieved for someone else to be there) and steps away, mumbling some sort of jargon Damien doesn’t have the energy to try and sort through.

Tess leans against him and nudges his arm with her head; obligingly, he lifts it and lets her nestle in against his chest before dropping his arm back around her shoulders. The coffee in her cup doesn’t move.

“This is my fault,” She says softly. “I should’ve seen this coming. I should’ve...I should’ve known. I should’ve done something.”

He squeezes her shoulders gently. “You had no idea he’d do something like this, Tess. None of us ever thought him capable of it. Sometimes when we love someone, we’re blind to the truth about them.”

The words hurt to finally speak aloud. He thought he’d made his peace with always being a step behind William. It shouldn’t still sting the way it does.

“He was my brother,” Tess chokes out, and Damien feels the first sob shake her whole body.

Her brother? She loved him like a brother? Loved him the way she’d loved Mark? Had _he_ been the blind one all along?

“I know,” Damien lies.

***

William confesses.

There is no trial, no messy drama. The worst it gets is when Tess, with one final act of love, has him sent to a mental institution instead of a prison. It was absolutely an abuse of her power, but she told the rest of the court that she knew better than any of them that William was not in his right mind. She’d dared them, without words, to challenge _her_ , a Barnum in all but blood, the administrator of the great Barnum fortune, the one woman in the city who could make or break their careers without a second thought.

They did not challenge her.

Damien sits beside of her on the beach, the rising tide starting to lap at their feet, but neither of them interested in moving. She’ll be burned, soon, her sunhat not providing much cover when she’s lying down and basking in the warmth. But he isn’t going to say anything.

“Hey,” She cracks an eye open to look up at him, gently lacing her fingers with his. “Come back to earth and kiss me.”

He shifts to prop up on an elbow beside of her, keeping their hands linked. “People will see.”

Tess rolls her eyes. “I don’t care! I’m tired of worrying about what people see. If they want to be nosy, they can pay the price.”

She pulls his hand and he keeps just enough poise to catch himself, arms bracketing her body. She grins up at him, the same way she did a lifetime ago when she’d made him laugh at a Debutante Ball. He’d wanted to kiss her then. So he drops his head and kisses her now, until they’re both breathless, and a pair of teenage boys a little further down the beach whistle obscenely at them.

He pulls back just enough to look down at her. A cloud passes over the sun, passes over her, and for a moment in the shadow—

_her head is twisted at a terrible angle her neck is snapped there is blood on her chest blood on her hands her eyes are flat and sunken and she is screaming his name with a mouth that shouldn’t move--_

The cloud passes. He blinks, and the horrible nightmare is gone. Tess looks up at him, brow furrowed with worry beneath the fingerwaves she’d always wanted. She reaches up to touch his cheek.

“Damien?” She murmurs, searching his face for an answer.

He smiles. “I’m fine.”

***

_He stands at her empty grave, a hundred years away, and feels nothing but contempt for a girl who always made the wrong choices._

**Author's Note:**

> basically--all of these are events that really happened over the course of Damien and Tess’s friendship, but not all of them went the way they seemed to here. That last line, Dark at the grave, is the reality. The rest of these memories/alternate realities are a loop Damien’s last two Good brain cells are trapped in to keep him from fighting back; Celine’s conscience (conscience, not consciousness) is stuck in a similar loop, though it doesn’t work as well for her because she knows something’s Fucky.


End file.
